Preparing Properly for COP26 through Climate Courtesy Credentials

If you experience a feeling of nostalgia towards steamships, steam trains and suchlike contraptions, perhaps you do not regard the future particularly seriously.

If you have a feeling of nostalgia for the pre-covid world, perhaps you are seeking a pleasant escape from the present reality you are facing.

If you have a feeling of nostalgia for no longer existing landscapes, perhaps you do not know whether those landscapes were healthy or unhealthy.

If you have a feeling of nostalgia for a particular type of housing, perhaps you have not taken comfort, safety and energy-efficiency into consideration properly.

If you are nostalgically hoping to recreate a long-lost forest, perhaps you are unaware that a tree plantation is not a balanced ecosystem.

If you are nostalgically hoping to recreate a long-lost community, please try to learn from history. 

If you are nostalgically hoping to prove science wrong merely by loudly protesting against its findings, are you loopy?

If you are nostalgically hoping to maintain your privileges and power, how much money are willing to pay?

If you are nostalgically hoping to indulge your ego at a major international conference soon, at vast public expense, as you have until recently, what good will that do?

What is the point of egocentric meetings?

Why do so many people in leadership positions pretend that meeting each other for chats actually solves urgent problems?

Perhaps they are deluded by their own hypocrisy and hubris.

The dangers facing the world, and the catastrophes already evident, are considerable.

How do you measure political action?

How do you measure political inaction?

How do you account for misguided nostalgia?

Members of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee (RCNC) have been polishing a rhetorical steam locomotive, testing a variety of political hot air balloons, and modifying an intangible steamship, ready for the Great Western journey to COP26 in Glasgow, with or without approval from the Australian government.

Members of the RCNC have been reading the latest IPCC report, namely AR6.

They have also been reading about the methane of Glamis and the methane of Cawdor.

They have been examining interpretations of climate science and interpretations of minds.

How do you compare growing threats with already existing ones?

How do you assess the activities of various social groups in terms of threats?

How do you assess human populations?

How much do you consume, and why?

How much do you waste, and why?

Although nature itself may reveal much danger at any moment, humans have a responsibility to manage risks.

As recent events, and less recent events, have shown, humans have a tendency to under-estimate risks.

And the ability to recover from a disaster often depends not only on the availability of resources but on psychological resilience.

What do you know about climate stability, psychological stability, political stability, economic stability and stable social relationships?

If you are familiar with the work of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee, what have you discovered, and how?



What do you already know about reasonableness of climate change mitigation?

What do you already know about the futility of various attempts at climate change adaption?

What have you discovered about security risks associated with climate change, and with new diseases and dangerous disease outbreaks, and failed states, and aggressive ones?

What have you discovered about mass migrations of humans?

Perhaps you have been (or will be) displaced by a disaster at least once in your lifetime.

What do you know about the history of forced displacements, whether by natural events or political ones or economic ones?

What is your acquaintance with environmental security?

What do you know about climate change vulnerabilities and the effects on humans?

There is obviously much to learn in preparation for COP26.

Perhaps the end result of the conference will, as on similar previous occasions, be much like the Mirabilia Urbis Romae.

What does the real past have in common with the real future?

What does the legendary past have in common with the legendary future?

Lives, homes and livelihoods, anywhere in the world, can very suddenly be lost.

What, then, can a little artistic appliqué and a nice cup of tea actually achieve?

Perhaps you are intending to unpick a few stitches whilst conversing about the Picts and a few pictures.

Or perhaps you wish to learn more about the importance of Jessie Newbery and her associates.

Preparing for COP26 requires much knowledge of history, and of good preparations more generally.

 


What is your understanding of the philosophical aspects of identity?

What is your acquaintance with essentialism and existentialism?

What is your acquaintance with euhemerisms and euphemisms?

What have you discovered about Caledonians and crannogs? 

Perhaps you have fantasies about the Picts.

How do you imagine various peoples?

What do you know about Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall?

How do you assess your intellect if not in terms of assessing reality and attempting to solve problems?

How do you compare the 19th century rational dress movement with the 21st century sustainable fashion movement?

How do you compare the women's suffrage movement with the climate action movement?

How do you combine political activism with the decorative arts?

What is your acquaintance with the Immortals?

How do you interpret their history, and their ongoing importance?

Preparing properly for COP26 requires an understanding of cultural history as well as climate history and political history.  It especially requires knowledge of palaces, castles, palisades and palace aides.

Perhaps you are wondering why.

You may or may not be well acquainted with the Glasgow School and the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists. 

What is your acquaintance with Glasgow as a city?

What do you know about the Scottish Enlightenment?

What is your acquaintance with the 10th millennium BC?

How does it compare with the 3rd millennium AD?

How and where did your ancestors live during the Pleistocene, and how do you know?

Perhaps you have difficulty distinguishing between the Pleistocene and Plasticine.

What is your acquaintance with the plastic arts?

What do you know about the geology of Scotland?

What do you know about the climate of Scotland and how it is influenced by the Gulf Stream?

You may or may not be well acquainted with the global temperature record.

What is your acquaintance with quaternary extinctions?

You may or may not have studied the geologic temperature record and noticed the comparative stability of climate data throughout the Holocene.

What do you know about the history of deglaciation and reglaciation? 

The Earth is apparently now in a post-Holocene situation, with possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation.

What is your acquaintance with the history of fortifications, including British hillforts?

What is your acquaintance with the history of fortified foods?

Perhaps you are mostly interested in the psychoactive effects of distilled alcohol and/or fortified wine.

Perhaps you will mostly associate COP26 with Scotch whisky, tartan souvenirs, men in kilts, the sound of bagpipes, sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, breakfasting on porridge oats, dining on haggis, and expressing mercenary intentions.

Perhaps you will mostly associate COP26 with whatever happens in China. 

Good design is at the heart of all good preparations.  But what does that mean in practice?

How do you attempt to distill the truth?

Perhaps you would rather read the Poppleton manuscript than the latest UN climate change report, or at least a journalistic interpretation of that report.

How have you interpreted the goals of COP26?

The goals were stupidly established before the latest climate report was published.

Goals should always be regarded as preliminary until enough evidence regarding their suitability has been achieved.

What can be discovered through the culture of Scotland about improving political, economic, environmental and cultural outcomes?

A member of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee is currently designing the antique Harris tweed, Paris Agreement bicycling and recycling suits for it delegates to wear in autumnal Glasgow.

The designer is wondering whether the delegates will also require pointed political talker hats with deerstalker flaps.

The committee has already agreed unanimously that very sensible shoes will be a necessity.

Do you ever wear brogues?

Do you ever wear tweed? 

Do you ever think carefully about what is dear to you and what is too expensive?

While you may associate Scottish culture with the English painter, Edwin Landseer, or the English aristocrat, Catherine Murray, or the boom and bust cycle of excessive inebriation, the symbolic national animal of Scotland is, of course, the unicorn, not The Monarch of the Glen.

How many unicorns will be attending COP26?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has been preparing properly for COP26 with tea, scones and science, not haggis or porridge or Scotch whisky or venison sandwiches.

Are you sure you have the necessary ethics, aesthetics and epistemological requirements to support the delegates properly?

 


Perhaps you associate shortbread with short tempers, particularly as both are rather unhealthy products.  Nevertheless, patience is no longer a suitable response to political nuisances.

To ensure everyone prepares properly not only for COP26 but its inevitable aftermath, the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has been working carefully with the Secular Order of the Perpetual Wait, the Adelaide Adagia News Ensemble, the global Mozarty Party, and various other eminent, appropriately collaborative entities.

The Civility Party of Australia has already been offering apologies to everyone affected by the interminably murderous political intransigence of its opponents.  

The party intends to send several representatives to COP26, as virtually and valuably as possible.

As the supplier of the only viable alternative to the ongoing policies of cruelty being emitted, but not admitted, from Canberra, its delegates intend to present the party's climate courtesy credentials at the conference.

What are your climate courtesy credentials?

What is your acquaintance with musical instruments and measuring instruments?

How do you compare the national symbols of Scotland with the cultural icons of Scotland and the practical application of scientific theory for the greater good and/or the greater harm?

How do you currently interpret the legacy of James Watt?

How do you currently interpret the legacy of the Modern Style?

What have you discovered about prehistoric petrospheres?

What have you discovered about the politics of petrodollars, in Scotland and elsewhere? 

You may or may not be familiar with the history of the Glasgow School of Art.  There have been quite a few triumphs and disasters associated with it.

You may or may not be aware of the cultural influence of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

You may or may not be aware of the cultural influence of Robert Burns and Walter Scott. 

You may or may not be aware of the cultural influence of David Hume and Adam Smith.

You may or may not be aware of the cultural influence of James Boswell and Robert Louis Stevenson.

You may or may not know much about red squirrels, Scottish red deer, the red grouse, Highland cattle, European pine martens, and other fauna of Scotland.

You may or may not know much about the history of the Stone of Scone, Pictish stones, Norrie's Law hoard, the origins of the Kingdom of Alba, and the British Coronation Chair.

You may or may not know much about English sarsen stones, including the Anglo-Saxon Coronation Stone.

You may or may not know much about the history of coal mining.

You may or may not be aware of the slave-like conditions under which Scottish colliers and salters worked over several centuries.

What is your acquaintance with debt bondage and inter-generational trauma?

What do you know about the global carbon debt as an inter-generational tragedy?

What is your acquaintance with old-growth forests, including remnants of the Caledonian Forest?

What do you know about the history of bicycling and responsible recycling and soil regeneration?

Perhaps you have been daringly unconventional from time to time, whether in a suitable suit or with a properly prepared response to climate discourtesy.

You may or may not be acquainted with Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings and/or the Scottish royal tapestry collection and/or the Hunt of the Unicorn.

Perhaps you are part of the Scottish diaspora. 

Whether you are or not, you may or may not know much about the cultural and political contributions of persons of Scottish birth, such as Catherine Helen Spence.

How do you compare the culture of Australia with the culture of Scotland?

How do you compare the Australian cultural cringe with the one purportedly associated with Scotland?

The suffragists and suffragettes of the past has many difficulties to overcome.  Yet similar struggles are continuing.

Many people feel disenfranchised, or they have never experienced adequate electoral processes.

Jessie Newbery was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).  The methods used by that organisation were rather more extreme than those associated with the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee.

Yet the world urgently requires appropriate deeds much more than appropriate words and sentiments.

No longer will sensible people tolerate being force fed platitudes and other ridiculous attitudes. 

One of the problems with nation-related attitudes, regardless of the nation in question, is that narrow-minded points of view tend to arise unless a globally-appropriate perspective is encouraged.

Will COP26 be more reflective of Scottish common sense realism or Scottish Romanticism or the Scottish Enlightenment or even the Renaissance as experienced in that part of the world?

With Australia 'governed' by a bunch of greedy, selfish idiots, inappropriate 'governance' must be taken into consideration properly at COP26.

The Hume Highway in Australia is named after Hamilton Hume, not David Hume.

In much of the world, particularly in the most corrupt parts of it, the philosophy of empiricism, the reasonableness of suitable skepticism and the policy necessities of metaphysical naturalism, are rarely taken properly into consideration.

Perhaps you would prefer tacky tartanry, or tales of Tartary, or a marmalade tart and a cup of tea, or a freshly baked cake from Cranston's bakery.

Perhaps you would prefer to learn more about the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours, or even the Royal School of Needlework.

Perhaps you wish to know more about the Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry, varying ideas about Scottish national identity, and/or the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage.

Perhaps you wish to know more about Frances Macdonald MacNair, Georgina Greenlees, Janet Aitken, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, and other Glasgow girls.

But what have you been learning about, and contributing towards, political pleasantness over the past few months, and what do you wish to contribute towards it in terms of climate courtesy credentials in the months ahead?



What is your acquaintance with the life and work of Jessie M King?

What is your acquaintance with the life and work of Stansmore Dean Stevenson?

What is your acquaintance with the life and work of Dorothy Carleton Smyth?

What is your acquaintance with the life and work of Katharine Cameron?

What is your acquaintance with the life and work of De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar?

Perhaps you wish to know more about the Women's Freedom League and the Glasgow Women's Library.

Suitable acquaintances are always necessary when seeking to reform politics and society.

Perhaps you have been learning from Anna Munro and her colleagues.

Perhaps you have been learning about the Suffragette Oak in Kelvingrove Park.

Perhaps you have been learning about, and (virtually) in, Glasgow Museums.

Are you sure you understand political pleasantness properly?

 

 

Perhaps you have been learning about the life and work of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.

Who, if anyone, regards you as a genius?

Perhaps you have been learning about the life and work of Bessie MacNicol?

Political pleasantness requires a few enlightening references as well as a few enlightening questions.  It also requires elegantly egalitarian approaches to political pleasantness through political philanthropy.

 

 

Much stupidity in the world arises through ignorant belligerence and greedy belligerence.  How, then, can a few examples of beautiful embroidery help to overcome such nastiness?

Far too many people make money out of military aggression, and other forms of aggression, and various types of hype.

Changes in climate are very dangerous indeed. 

The seriousness of highly contagious, debilitating diseases are quite likely to be ignored, along with necessary protection measures against climate extremes.

You may already know how much damage floods and fires do to beautiful works of art, and to beautiful gardens, and beautiful lives.

Competitiveness is often aggressive.  And all aggression is ugly.

Wastefulness is ugly.  Fashion is ugly when it ignores truth and goodness.  Marketing is ugly when it claims the fashionable is beautiful.  

Art cannot coexist with a throw-away society, and nor can life.  

Perhaps you are familiar with the art of  Norah Neilson Gray.

What do you know about the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Services?

While satire may or may not ridicule appropriately, there will always be a need for appropriate satire. 

 


There will also always be a need for appropriate courtesy and public interest journalism.

There will also always be a need for appropriate understandings of history.

What, for example do you know about Sir George Bruce of Carnock and Culross Palace?

What is your acquaintance with Ossian?

What is your acquaintance with Macbeth, King of Scotland?

What is your acquaintance with Ann Macbeth?

What is your acquaintance with the Swedish naturalist, Carl Peter Thunberg?

What is your acquaintance with the Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg?

What is your acquaintance with the history of teahouses?

Perhaps you are familiar with the life and career of Catherine Cranston. 

Perhaps you enjoy wearing earlier fashions. 

Of course, thoughtful expressions of historical fashions and other artistic pursuits and educational pursuits and business pursuits require sufficient financial support.

Perhaps you enjoy poetry about Scottish drinking habits of the less refined variety.

How do you prefer to compare one Cutty Sark with another? 

Clippers were ships for the tea trade with China.

What is your acquaintance with the career of Hercules Linton?

What have you been learning about wonderful witches and their preparations for COP26?


 

Perhaps you regard Rachel Hamilton as a witch.


 

How do you usually perceive strong women, of whatever socioeconomic and/or cultural background?

How do you usually assess the credentials of people, regardless of gender and background? 

What do you know about the credentials of James Macpherson?

What do you know about the credentials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

What do you know about the credentials of the International Energy Agency?

What do you know about the credentials of young people, poor people and otherwise relatively powerless people?

What do you know about the credentials of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee?

What do you know about the credentials of politicians?

What do you know about your own climate courtesy?

How do you usually assess your preferences, and your education? 

Please note that Civility Today reflects expertise in courtesy, not psephology.

How do you usually assess civility and etiquette?

How do you compare yourself with Elizabeth Sutherland Leveson-Gower?

Perhaps you regard her as a witch.

What is your acquaintance with the Scottish Highland Clearances?

What is your acquaintance with the Agricultural Revolution in Scotland and the associated Lowland Clearances?

What do you know about non-renewable resources and other finite resources?

How do you assess countries by energy imports and other imports?

How do you assess countries by energy exports and other exports?

How do you assess countries in terms of egalitarian local and global policies?

What do you know about fossil fuel exporters?

What do you know about staple foods?

What do you know about meat and livestock exporters and importers?

What do you know about grain exporters and importers?  

What do you know about experiences of famine in Scotland?

How do you compare the economic effects of the Little Ice Age with the economic effects of anthropogenic global warming? 

How have you assessed the Darien scheme?

How do you usually assess food prices?

How do you usually assess hygiene?

If you have continued to visit Civility Today each day since its beginnings, you will be aware that the Adelaide Adagia courtesy experts continue to offer elegantly egalitarian journalistic and artistic services to help you prevent destructive practices everywhere, and especially in Australia.

Civility Today is itself one of those services.

How do you prefer to assess economics in terms of climate courtesy? 

How have you make assessments of transport in relation to climate courtesy?

What do you know about the history of the Flying Scotsman?

What do you know about heritage steam trains in various parts of the world? 

How will you be assessing the conduct of various persons in relation to COP26, and why?

How do you assess credence in relation to credentials?

How have you been expressing creativity in relation to climate courtesy?

What do you know about real and fake courtesy in relation to trade?

How have you been comparing gas lighting with gaslighting?  

How, if at all, have you been confronting the enemies of climate courtesy?

What do you know about employment in terms of climate courtesy?

How does your climate courtesy extend to animals and plants, if at all?

How does your climate courtesy extend to people in poverty?

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